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GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tracker nyaa.si

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Re: GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tracker nyaa.si

#71

Post by sodality2 »

cataphract wrote: post #54
slg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but I am pretty sure Microsoft has little recourse here. The requests would need to be knowingly fraudulent for recourse and that is a huge hurdle to prove that the MPA is knowingly acting in bad faith rather than just being overaggressive. The DMCA desperately needs to be reworked at the very least.

If they can be sure there is no copyright violation, then what would the downside be? By not acting on the DMCA notice, they would lose their safe harbor, which would be inconsequential.

>If they can be sure there is no copyright violation

Will they think that, though? I doubt they would take the risk.

Re: GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tracker nyaa.si

#72

Post by f311a »

sodality2 wrote: post #47
wilshire_nc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never saw the repo, but to play devil's advocate it's possible that there's a unit test or something that downloads copyrighted material. That's what got youtube-dl taken down.

Doubt, there would be no reason for it to be copyrighted material, it would just be a torrent test

You clearly didn’t read the DMCA

Re: GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tracker nyaa.si

#73

Post by formerly_proven »

La1n wrote: post #41
ratww wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's next, hard disk manufacturers? Internet providers? You're joking, but in some countries there are taxes on blank recording media: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy

And in the Netherlands those used to make sense. As downloading copyrighted material was legal for personal use https://mashable.com/2014/04/10/downloading-pirated-content-...

Introduce levy to cover for people copying stuff, then introduce copy protection and anti-circumvention laws so copying becomes illegal. Continue to collect levy. Ingenious.

Re: GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tracker nyaa.si

#74

Post by livueta »

maltalex wrote: post #63

The title is misleading. This isn't some generic torrent tracker. The repo in question is the source of a specific site - nyaa.si [0] which according to the complaint is preconfigured to share copyrighted material: > The identified files and code are preconfigured to find and provide infringing copies of our Members’ film and tv content to Nyaa.si users in violation of copyright law. This is probably what makes this…

You've got a point, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25836800 also points this out.

My eye was caught by

> The Project blatantly infringes the MPA Member Studios’ copyrights and countless other copyrights. Indeed, copyright infringement is so prevalent within the Project that infringement plainly is its predominant use and purpose.

when submitting, and you could argue that does constitute a blanket attack against dual-use products, but the specific allegations you cite are also relevant. Since I could still edit the title I changed it to "for source code of torrent tracker nyaa.si"; hope that's clearer.

Re: GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tracker nyaa.si

#75

Post by hedora »

mmastrac wrote: post #9

The MPA seems to be getting braver with these takedowns, considering how quickly the youtube-dl one got flipped around. This one seems particularly shaky as you could not use it to explicitly download anything - rather to host data of your own (with no explicit requirement for it to be unauthorized copyright violation). EDIT: perhaps just a ploy to unmask the authors of the torrent site?

Sooner or later, one of these projects will counter-sue for misuse of copyright.

Misuse of copyright is when a copyright holder attempts to illegitimately expand the rights granted to them by their copyright in some work (in this case, quashing competition from distribution channels that are used to distribute unrelated copyrighted material).

The normal punishment for misuse of copyright is the rendering of the copyright unenforceable. The letter clearly sets the scope of the copyrights that would be at stake in this case:

" each of the major motion picture studios in the United States, specifically, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Universal City Studios LLC, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Netflix Studios, LLC, and their respective affiliates (collectively, the “MPA Member Studios”), which own or control exclusive rights under copyright in and to a vast number of motion pictures and television shows."

I'm not a lawyer, but misuse of copyright / trademark should be covered in any decent introduction to intellectual property law course. The MPA lawyers are either incompetent or working under the assumption that their clients are invincible / above the law.

I think pushing back on this take down notice would be a slam dunk case.

Re: GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tracker nyaa.si

#76

Post by bluGill »

bobthepanda wrote: post #35
rapfaria wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you are paying for 10 distinct services, and the music colossi start to create services of their own. Who you gonna call? Plex+sonarr

A music colossus already tried this, and Tidal landed with a thud. People are loyal to artists, not labels, and artists change labels on a fairly regular basis. It's not like TV where shows generally live and die on a single channel, and maybe get salvaged onto a second one.

And if not loyal to an artist it is a genera or station. Classical music listeners can get Bach from a number of different artists, if a few are missing they typically can get by with the others. If someone puts a station on Pandora it will be a long time before they notice that something is missing.

With TV there is a long standing character development to get people interested in something in particular. With music you often just want a style - though there are favorites with particular meaning that you may want.

Re: GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tracker nyaa.si

#77

Post by bagacrap »

mmastrac wrote: post #9

The MPA seems to be getting braver with these takedowns, considering how quickly the youtube-dl one got flipped around. This one seems particularly shaky as you could not use it to explicitly download anything - rather to host data of your own (with no explicit requirement for it to be unauthorized copyright violation). EDIT: perhaps just a ploy to unmask the authors of the torrent site?

The case seems to rest on this precedent:

""" See Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster Ltd., 545 U.S. 913, 940 n.13 (2005) (“the distribution of a product can itself give rise to liability where evidence shows that the distributor intended and encouraged the product to be used to infringe”) """

Re: GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tracker nyaa.si

#78

Post by meibo »

jhare wrote: post #44

Github bowing to these requests is really disappointing. Makes me sad.

U.S. organizations need to follow U.S. law.

Github has shown that they're trying to fight these things, with yt-dl reinstatement and a recent donation to the EFF.

https://github.blog/2020-11-16-standing-up-for-developers-yo...

Re: GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tracker nyaa.si

#79

Post by f311a »

dmaz wrote: post #39

Reading the complaint, it's clear their focus is not on generic tracker source code but on copyrighted file metadata being preloaded into the tracker source code: > The identified files and code are preconfigured to find and provide infringing copies of our Members’ film and tv content to Nyaa.si users in violation of copyright law.

Yes, people should really read the DMCA before jumping into conclusions. I see a lot of false assumptions in the comments.

Re: GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tracker nyaa.si

#80

Post by wolco5 »

afavour wrote: post #70
toomuchtodo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github needs to go on the offensive and begin to take action against fraudulent DMCA notices, including justification to seek damages for these claims.

It's weird that we expect Github to do that, in a way. The repo might well be hosted on there for free, but we all want Github to spend a ton in legal fees to defend something they make zero cash from. I'm not sure what my point is here other than finding it sad that code hosting is so centralised.

We do. We want to see github or anyone defend any fake lawsuit against them.
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